Aiming to replace the hard drive, Dropbox launched a slew of new products for its developer platform Tuesday at its first developer conference.
Dropbox’s Drew Houston also announced that the company now has more than 175 million users, up from 100 million in November. It also has more than 100,000 developers on its platform.
Dropbox, which has been valued at around $4 billion, is moving beyond just syncing files. With its new Datastore API, developers can sync contact lists, settings, to-do lists or gaming states (how far you are in a game). Essentially any data that can be used in an app can now be synced through Dropbox. This is key as more mobile devices proliferate.
The Datastore API can also do things like sync data across offline and online apps–for example when you’re on an airplane with no Internet connection, and ensure that all devices are in sync.
The Drop-ins API, enables developers to more easily integrate Dropbox so that users can incorporate data into their web and mobile apps. Companies that have already used it include Yahoo YHOO +4.51% Mail, Shutterstock SSTK +3.44% and Mailbox, which Dropbox recently acquired.
The API includes Chooser, which gives apps quick access to Dropbox files, and Saver, which saves files instantly to Dropbox. On email apps, this means users can send file attachments from Dropbox and save email attachments to Dropbox. This means that users would theoretically have less and less need to save directly to their hard drives.
In March Dropbox acquired Mailbox, a slick email app, showing hints of its broader ambitions. Today’s news shows just how high Dropbox is aiming. With all consumer and enterprise computing moving to the cloud, the company wants to be the infrastructure of users’ data underlying almost any conceivable web or mobile app. It also places it more directly in competition with others like Apple .
Dropbox’s Drew Houston also announced that the company now has more than 175 million users, up from 100 million in November. It also has more than 100,000 developers on its platform.
Dropbox, which has been valued at around $4 billion, is moving beyond just syncing files. With its new Datastore API, developers can sync contact lists, settings, to-do lists or gaming states (how far you are in a game). Essentially any data that can be used in an app can now be synced through Dropbox. This is key as more mobile devices proliferate.
The Datastore API can also do things like sync data across offline and online apps–for example when you’re on an airplane with no Internet connection, and ensure that all devices are in sync.
The Drop-ins API, enables developers to more easily integrate Dropbox so that users can incorporate data into their web and mobile apps. Companies that have already used it include Yahoo YHOO +4.51% Mail, Shutterstock SSTK +3.44% and Mailbox, which Dropbox recently acquired.
The API includes Chooser, which gives apps quick access to Dropbox files, and Saver, which saves files instantly to Dropbox. On email apps, this means users can send file attachments from Dropbox and save email attachments to Dropbox. This means that users would theoretically have less and less need to save directly to their hard drives.
In March Dropbox acquired Mailbox, a slick email app, showing hints of its broader ambitions. Today’s news shows just how high Dropbox is aiming. With all consumer and enterprise computing moving to the cloud, the company wants to be the infrastructure of users’ data underlying almost any conceivable web or mobile app. It also places it more directly in competition with others like Apple .
By Tomio Geron
Article From : forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2013/07/09/dropbox-platform-moves-even-more-data-to-the-cloud/
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